Just the Facts

May 7, 2007|

A Feb. 16 column in The Morning Sun, a Mt. Pleasant newspaper,
declared that the scientific debate about global warming "is over." As proof of
this assertion, columnist Eric Baerren cited the recently released summary of an upcoming report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. The only skeptics, according to Baerren, are "raving lunatics."

In fact, surveys of climate scientists have documented sharp
disagreements regarding the extent, causes and consequences of global climate
change. Moreover, the accuracy of the summary report cited by Baerren is under
challenge as misrepresenting the actual content of the U.N. report.

The Morning Sun is not alone in characterizing the climate
change debate as settled. Headlines in newspapers big and small have trumpeted
similar claims following the release of the summary. However, what many have
failed to note is the fact that the summary was a product of political
negotiation among various government appointees rather than the conclusions of
the scientific community. Nor has it been widely reported that the summary of
findings differs significantly from previous reports, indicating considerable
uncertainty about the status of climate change.

A pre-publication review of the actual report by the Center for
Science and Public Policy notes, for example, that the U.N. panel has cut by
half its previous prediction of the rise in sea levels. Likewise, the new report
indicates that an earlier assessment of human influence on climate change was
dramatically overstated — in excess of 30 percent. Such revisions are a common
feature of the "modeling" upon which most climate change theory is based.

The inherent uncertainty of climate models was underscored in a
recent Wall Street Journal column by Philip Stott, professor emeritus of
biogeography at the University of London. According to Stott, "The inconvenient
truth remains that climate is the most complex, coupled, nonlinear, chaotic
system known. Models that strive to incorporate everything, from aerosols to
vegetation and volcanoes to ocean currents, may look convincing, but the error
range associated with each additional factor results in near-total uncertainty."

With respect to the supposed "consensus" about climate change,
German environmental scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch found none in
their 1996 and 2003 surveys of more than 530 climate scientists from 27
countries. Only 2 percent of the climate scientists surveyed said they "strongly agree" that the models used to predict climate change are accurate, according to a report of the survey by James M. Taylor, editor of Environment & Climate News. A majority of respondents said they do not believe the current state of knowledge is adequate to provide reasonable predictions of climate variability over 100-year time periods, and more respondents "strongly disagree" than "strongly agree" that climate change is caused by humans, Taylor reported.